Saturday, January 30, 2016

When a Book Refuses to Wait Its Turn...That's a Good Thing

One of the book's I'm reading at the moment is Chris Pavone's The Traveler, a spy thriller pitting several bunches of competing spies against each other.  I usually have three or four (sometimes twice that number) of books going at once, but every so often one of the book's jumps out of line and refuses to wait for its next turn at being read.

That's what's happened with The Travelers.  The book is written in the third person from the points-of-view of several of its main players.  There is, however, one central hero, and this poor sap is pretty much led around by the nose by everyone else in the book.  To say that he is confused is an understatement.  The Advance Reader's Edition of the book I'm reading is 433 pages long, and along about page 300 I began to notice my reluctance to switch to another book when current-book fatigue began to set in.  

Now, just a few hours later, I'm on page 402...finally not quite as confused as our hero...and find myself rushing to the end to see who survives the final showdown and what the aftermath of that confrontation will bring.

Congratulations, Chris Pavone, on a spy novel that offers a different reading experience from most of the others in the genre.  I'll be doing a full review on The Travelers in a week or two...now, break over, it's back to the book.

2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. It's always a good thing when it happens to me because I try to read about 40 pages of a book before turning to the next one in progress. When a writer convinces me to keep going well beyond the intended 40-page read, I know that I'm well and truly hooked.

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